I’ve recently watched the new Netflix film “Society of the Snow”, which covers the harrowing events of the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed in the Andes in 1972.
I thought the film was excellent - beautifully shot, and a more true telling of the events than 1993’s “Alive”, not least because it was filmed in Spanish with a mostly mostly unknown Uruguayan and Argentinian cast. Definitely a movie that stays with you.
After watching I fell down the usual internet rabbit hole, researching again the real events, and was struck by one statistic regarding the aircraft type involved - the Fairchild FH-227.
According to Wikipedia, of the 78 aircraft produced, 23 were lost to crashes. This works out at just under 30%, which seems incredibly high to me.
Is this unusual, and if so why do you think the numbers were so high?
It looks like only 3 of them were lost because of technical problems with the plane.
One thing that may look to brave for ACs or designers, they had only 2 pilots - no navigator or an engineer. In 1950s. And the plane was more complex and fast than the DC-3. It looks to me that their pilots were simply overloaded with their job.
The pilots made nav errors during this fatal flight. Looks like DME didn’t work and probably had strong head wind so they turned north too early and began desc over mountains covered with clouds.
Ah, that’s a good point regarding the cause of the losses. I suppose the areas they were operating were more challenging for the pilots than a lot of commercial routes.
In this instance the one of the pilots, who briefly survived the crash, had mistakenly thought they were further west than they were in reality. This played in to the surviving passengers eventual decision to walk out of the mountains to find help, as they thought they were nearer civilisation than they actually were.
I seem to remember seeing in a documentary about it (where they flew some of the survivors back to the crash site) that one could have seen a roadway off in the distance to the east if they’d had clear skies and believed what they were seeing.
On Friday, October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, an FH-227D carrying 45 people, crashed in the Andes mountains. The pilot mistakenly believed the aircraft had overflown Curicó, the turning point to fly north, and begin descending. He failed to notice that instrument readings indicated he was still 60–70 km (37–43 mi) east of Curicó. The plane crashed at 11,000 feet (3,400 m) on a glacier; 16 of the 45 people on board survived for 72 days by resorting to anthropophagy, or eating their dead friends. The event became known as the “Miracle in the Andes”, and was the subject of the 1974 book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors and the 1993 film Alive.
From what I understand, yes - it was an easier route to the east, and they were only 13 miles from a disused hotel that could have provided better shelter and connected to a road. Whether that would have been the best choice is hard to say.
Incidentally, the hotel is used today as a starting point for hikes up to the crash site and memorial.